… it is my firm belief that the relationship between the United States and India — bound by our shared interests and our shared values — will be one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century.

… Instead of resisting the global economy, you became one of its engines…

… This year, as India marks 60 years with a strong and democratic constitution, the lesson is clear: India has succeeded, not in spite of democracy; India has succeeded because of democracy.

… For we are two strong democracies whose constitutions begin with the same revolutionary words — the same revolutionary words — “We the people.” We are two great republics dedicated to the liberty and justice and equality of all people.

… Now, let me say it as clearly as I can: The United States not only welcomes India as a rising global power, we fervently support it, and we have worked to help make it a reality.” Barack Obama 2010)

An Indian court ruled Saturday that award-winning author Arundhati Roy could face prosecution for allegedly speaking out on the disputed region of Kashmir, according to a report.

A court in Delhi allowed the registration of a case against Roy and hardline Kashmiri separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the Press Trust of India reported, without giving further details.

Roy, winner of the prestigious Booker award for her novel “The God of Small Things” in 1997, is a fierce critic of Indian policy in Kashmir, where protests against New Delhi have claimed some 111 lives since June.

﻿… In October, she said in a statement: “What I say (about Kashmir) comes from love and pride.”

“I said what millions of people here (in Kashmir) say every day. I said what I as well as other commentators have written and said for years,” she said.

The main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has called Roy’s comments “seditious” and accused the Congress-led government of “looking the other way” by not taking any legal action against her.

I want to put up a little bit of Arundhati Roy’s “Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers“. Arundhati Roy is an Indian writer and anti-neoliberal globalism activist. In 2006 she signed a letter with Chomsky, Zinn and others that was published in the Guardian which called the 2006 Lebanon War a “war crime” and accused Israel of “state terror”. She calls into question the official stories of several “terrorist acts” in India and the United States, including 9/11 and she makes clear the manner in which the representative governments of India and the US and Britain have profited from those attacks politically and financially. She writes about colonialism, fascism, and what tragically appears to be a growing middle class complacency in India and the US.